Posts tagged Cleopatra

If you haven’t taken our Richard Burton quiz already, scroll back to Friday’s blog and please do so. It’s been mounted by your classic movie guys — Joe Morella and Frank Segers — in honor of the recent publication of The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams, Yale Univ. Press.

Our questions then and answers (part 1 today) are based on selections from the thousands of diary entries compiled by the actor from 1939 when he was 14 until his death in 1984. Most date from the mid Sixties when he turned 40, and was in the heady first days of marriage number one to Elizabeth Taylor.

In the interest of keeping things as concise as possible, we’ve decided to break our answers portion of the quiz into two parts, the second due tomorrow. So here we go:

Question: What was Burton’s reaction when he first saw Cleopatra, the disastrous 1963 costume epic which sank a studio but introduced him to Elizabeth Taylor? Did he 1) laugh uproariously; 2) express that he was ‘totally horrified’ 3) express indifference or 4) wax favorable to the film as a whole?

Answer:Cleopatra now is known as the costliest commercial flop in Hollywood history. Whatever its virtues (it was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, after all) it is remembered today for the Burton-Elizabeth Taylor on-and-off-set romantics and its extravagant cost (more than $44 million or about $320 million in today’s dollars). Burton’s reaction when he glimpsed the film was 3) indifference. Wrote Burton: My lack of interest in my own career past, present or future is almost total.

Answer: 2) Richard Walter Jenkins, born Nov. 10, 1925 in Glamorgan, Wales. He was named after his coal miner father.

Question: Didn’t Burton squander a flourishing career as a Shakespearean actor for the easy buck of Hollywood? True or false.

Answer: False. Burton always rejected the conventional view of his career as an actor of “incredible potential who has lazed his talent away.” The theater was not his “first love” he would snap at those who asked. He claimed he loathed movie and stage work in general, viewing himself as an extraordinary lazy actor. Be that as it may, Burton was also an incredibly talented one.

Question: Isn’t Burton the most nominated leading actor never to have won an Academy Award? True or false.

Answer: False. Burton was nominated seven times but never won an Academy Award. In numerical order, actor received a best supporting actor nomination for 1952′s My CousinRachel. His best actor nominations were for 1953′s The Robe, 1964′s Becket, 1965′s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Frank’s pick as his best film), 1966′s Who’s Afraid ofVirginia Woolf, 1969′s Anne of the Thousand Days and 1977′s Equus. Peter O’Toole, who recently announced his retirement from acting, was nominated eight times but never won.

Question: Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that financed and made Cleopatra, actually sued Burton claiming that his on-set affair with Taylor severely damaged the movie, the biggest single commercial flop in Hollywood history. True or false?

Answer: True. Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck launched litigation against both Burton and Taylor alleging that their affair hurt the movie’s commercial prospects. The suit was eventually dropped.

More answers tomorrow including one to this question — did his marriages to Taylor bankrupt him.

Hello, everybody. Your classic movie guys, Frank Segers and Joe Morella, reporting today we have been so inspired by The Richard Burton Diaries –edited by ChrisWilliams, published by Yale University Press, 2012 — that we are presenting this quiz designed to test your knowledge of the actor (and what’s-her-name, the woman he married twice).

In its review of the book, British film magazine Sight & Sound recalled the intense public fascination back in the Sixties and Seventies with Burton and his most famous wife (he had four):

It’s probably hard for readers under the age of, say, 45, to imagine just how absurdly famous Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were at the height of their notoriety: Multiply Brad and Angelina by (Prince William) and Kate and your might come somewhere close, but only just.

We suspect you know a lot more about Taylor than her almost-equally famous husband. To see how much you do know about Richard Burton, feel free to take the following quiz. Answers next week, so stay tuned.

Question: What was Burton’s reaction when he first saw Cleopatra, the disastrous 1963 costume epic which sank a studio but introduced him to Elizabeth Taylor? Did he 1) laugh uproariously; 2) express that he was ‘totally horrified’ 3) express indifference or 4) wax favorable to the film as a whole?

Question: Didn’t Burton squander a flourishing career as a Shakespearean actor for the easy buck of Hollywood? True or false.

Question: Isn’t Burton the most nominated leading actor never to have won an Academy Award? True or false.

Question: Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that financed and made Cleopatra, actually sued Burton claiming that his on-set affair with Taylor severely damaged the movie, perhaps the biggest single commercial flop in Hollywood history. True or false?

Question: How devoted was Burton to Taylor during their two marriages spread over 11 years? 1) very; 2) he had many affairs during their union; 3) he was a total philanderer; or 4) insisted on an “open marriage?”

Question: Taylor finally left Burton because she could no longer abide his heavy drinking. True or false?

Question: Burton once made a movie costarring Raquel Welch and bombshell JoeyHeatherton, and had affairs with both. True or false?

Question: Burton felt that in the end his marriages to Taylor hurt his career. True or false?

Question: Burton spent so much money during his Taylor marriages that he died broke. True or false?